by Marion Winik
When
I sat down last
night to make my New Year’s resolutions, I went totally blank for a minute.
Which is strange, because I’ve been making pretty much the same list for the
past two decades. All of a sudden, this year, I had to think. Now what was it I
was going to do? Lose weight? Quit smoking? Stop yelling at my kids? Get
organized, do exercise, be generous, patient, and creative, all while
maintaining an ambitious reading list, a thorough knowledge of current events,
a spotless home, healthy potted plants, and regular oil changes for my
frequently vacuumed car? Oh yeah, now I remember. I was going to put on skin
cream every night and drink only in moderation at social gatherings.
I feel a little like Katie, my boyfriend’s nine-year-old daughter. The night
we mailed the kids’ letters to the North Pole, she told us, I want to believe
in Santa Claus, I really do, but it’s getting harder every year. I feel the
same way about New Year’s resolutions. It’s getting harder to believe. Having
seen myself fail abysmally or partially, immediately or eventually, in
virtually every resolve, I’m finding it a little harder to pull myself together
to make them. Wouldn’t it be better to go on as a blissfully undisciplined slob
than to become an undisciplined slob who feels bad because she’s failed to
become something else?
Ah, New Year’s Day. Like Lent after Mardi Gras, like the wedding ceremony
after the bachelor party, it is an occasion that purports to make saints of
those who have been indulging in the most insane debauchery imaginable right up
until their head hit the pillow, or the sidewalk, the night before. Hey, you
with the hangover: Time to be Mother Teresa! Binge/purge, binge/purge, enough
already. I for one am getting too old for all these extremes. I can’t go
changing my whole life overnight anymore. It gives me a headache. It makes me
cranky. And it never works. If there was anything I was going to do by the time
I turned 40, well, I’m 37 now. At the very least, it’s time to apply for an
extension.
Yet I still like the idea of making New Year’s resolutions, as long as there’s
no expectation of actually accomplishing them — all at once, immediately,
without looking back. As long as the idea is not “You are bad; from now on you
will be good. You are sick, from now on you will be well.” I know where this
attitude gets you: badder and sicker than you were in the first place by the
end of January.
Maybe instead of resolutions, we should think of them as aspirations. While
resolutions require action, aspirations are something you live with, like the
two volumes of War and Peace in your suitcase every vacation, like the
separate bank account you opened to set aside money each month. Hey, I know
aspirations. I’m the one who spends her days dashing off trashy articles for
women’s magazines and her nights reading volumes of literature and criticism I
hardly understand. Well, it’s important for me to be aware of trends in
narrative theory and the latest re-interpretation of Kafka, don’t you think?
Yes, it’s true — I have aspirations. I also have a pair of size 4 jeans in my
closet, which I believe I did wear once, and am quite sure I will wear again.
So I keep them hanging there, right along with the 8s, 10s, and 12s I can
actually get into. Because it’s okay to want to be something better, or at
least thinner, than you are, as long as you keep your sense of humor about it.
Make your New Years list in the spirit of size 4 jeans: Keep it around, and
something just might happen. n
This article appears in January 12 • 1996 and January 12 • 1996 (Cover).